The exorbitant cost of educating the children of illegal immigrants in public schools across the U.S. is sure to skyrocket now that a new study confirms the number of anchor babies has nearly doubled in the last few years and will likely keep growing.

U.S. taxpayers already dish out around $52 billion to educate the children of illegal aliens with local governments taking the biggest hit (nearly $50 billion) and the feds contributing about $2 billion. The biggest chunk goes to elementary and high school education, but a substantial portion ($8.3 billion) also goes to specialized instruction for limited English speakers and several hundred million dollars is spent on subsidized college tuitions.

Those already astronomical figures will surely increase as the population of illegal immigrant offspring swells. A new study released by a nonprofit dedicated to chronicling “Latino’s diverse experiences in a changing America” reveals a surge in anchor babies that will inevitably take a huge toll on U.S. taxpayers. It also indicates that automatic citizenship granted to all U.S.-born children—as per the Constitution’s 14th Amendment—is a huge lure for illegal immigrants.

That’s probably why illegal immigrants are having babies in the U.S. at a much higher rate than the general population, according to the PewHispanicCenter study released this week. The number of children born to illegal immigrants in the U.S. jumped to 4 million from 2.7 million in a six-year period and the children of illegal aliens accounted for 340,000 out of the 4.3 million babies born in 2008, the latest year for which figures were available.

This means that nearly one out of every 13 children born in the U.S. have an illegal immigrant parent. On a broader scale, nearly 79% of the 5.1 million children of illegal aliens were born in this country and are therefore U.S. citizens, the analysis found. This means that Americans will pay more to educate anchor babies as well as provide them with other welfare benefits normally denied if they were foreign born.